4. Often (and this is the hardest condition) the same sign is used to represent different syllables. Thus the same sign is sometimes read "ilou," and sometimes "an." This writing was difficult even for those who executed it. "A good half of the cuneiform monuments which we possess comprises guides (grammars, dictionaries, pictures), which enable us to decipher the other half, and which we consult just as Assyrian scholars did 2,500 years ago."[19]
Cuneiform inscriptions have been solved in the same manner as the Egyptian hieroglyphics—there was an inscription in three languages—Assyrian, Mede, and Persian. The last gave the key to the other two.
The Assyrian People.—The Assyrians were a race of hunters and soldiers. Their bas-reliefs ordinarily represent them armed with bow and lance, often on horseback. They were good knights—alert, brave, clever in skirmish and battle; also bombastic, deceitful, and sanguinary. For six centuries they harassed Asia, issuing from their mountains to hurl themselves on their neighbors, and returning with entire peoples reduced to slavery. They apparently made war for the mere pleasure of slaying, ravaging, and pillaging. No people ever exhibited greater ferocity.
The King.—Following Asiatic usage they regarded their king as the representative of God on earth and gave him blind obedience. He was absolute master of all his subjects, he led them in battle, and at their head fought against other peoples of Asia. On his return he recorded his exploits on the walls of his palace in a long inscription in which he told of his victories, the booty which he had taken, the cities burned, the captives beheaded or flayed alive. We present some passages from these stories of campaigns:
Assurnazir-hapal in 882 says, "I built a wall before the great gates of the city; I flayed the chiefs of the revolt and with their skins I covered this wall. Some were immured alive in the masonry, others were crucified or impaled along the wall. I had some of them flayed in my presence and had the wall hung with their skins. I arranged their heads like crowns and their transfixed bodies in the form of garlands."
In 745 Tiglath-Pilezer II writes, "I shut up the king in his royal city. I raised mountains of bodies before his gates. All his villages I destroyed, desolated, burnt. I made the country desert, I changed it into hills and mounds of débris."
In the seventh century Sennacherib wrote: "I passed like a hurricane of desolation. On the drenched earth the armor and arms swam in the blood of the enemy as in a river. I heaped up the bodies of their soldiers like trophies and I cut off their extremities. I mutilated those whom I took alive like blades of straw; as punishment I cut off their hands." In a bas-relief which shows the town of Susa surrendering to Assurbanipal one sees the chiefs of the conquered tortured by the Assyrians; some have their ears cut off, the eyes of others are put out, the beard torn out, while some are flayed alive. Evidently these kings took delight in burnings, massacres, and tortures.
Ruin of the Assyrian Empire.—The Assyrian régime began with the capture of Babylon (about 1270). From the ninth century the Assyrians, always at war, subjected or ravaged Babylonia, Syria, Palestine, and even Egypt. The conquered always revolted, and the massacres were repeated. At last the Assyrians were exhausted. The Babylonians and Medes made an alliance and destroyed their empire. In 625 their capital, Nineveh, "the lair of lions, the bloody city, the city gorged with prey," as the Jewish prophets call it, was taken and destroyed forever. "Nineveh is laid waste," says the prophet Nahum, "who will bemoan her?"
THE BABYLONIANS
The Second Chaldean Empire.—In the place of the fallen Assyrian empire there arose a new power—in ancient Chaldea. This has received the name Babylonian Empire or the Second Chaldean Empire. A Jewish prophet makes one say to Jehovah, "I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation which shall march through the breadth of the land to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. Their horses are swifter than leopards. Their horsemen spread themselves; (their horsemen) shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat." They were a people of knights, martial and victorious, like the Assyrians. They subjected Susiana, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Jordan. But their régime was short: founded in 625, the Babylonian Empire was overthrown by the Persians in 538 B.C.